They growled happily and loped off back to their duties. Seri looked after them, his face abstracted.
'You always did have a way with them,' he muttered. 'They serve me willingly enough, but you they love. Well!' He shook his head and sighed. 'All right, Johnny, I'll listen to you.' For the first time he made a gesture of friendship, his hand on Kettrick's shoulder. 'Go and bathe yourself, you stink like a dirty crew hole. And I suppose my clothes will still fit you. Take whatever you need.' He pushed Kettrick ahead of him. 'Go along. We'll wait for you in the garden.'
Kettrick went into the house. It had not changed since he had seen it, and it brought poignant thoughts of the house he himself had once lived in, a mile or so away on the other side of the river. Well, if things worked out, he would live there again. With or without Larith.
He was still angry and hurt.
In the bath, he laid aside the money belt that contained his emergency funds and dropped his dirty clothes thankfully into the disposal chute. He shaved while Seri's big sunken hot tub was filling, and then he scrubbed himself, washing the dye from his skin and hair. The shallow disguise would not help him now if he were caught, and it made him feel uncomfortable and foolish. Deliberately forgetting Larith, he abandoned himself to the simple sensual pleasure of being clean again. After the hot bath he plunged into the cool one, went through the airspray, and emerged looking and feeling like a new man.
Seri's closets were well-stocked as always. He was almost finished dressing when Larith knocked on the door and called his name.
He opened the door. She came in and stood, looking into his face, and now the mask was gone, or at least it had slipped aside.
'That was hard to take,' she said. 'Coming like that…without warning. I'd made up my mind I would never see you again.'
'Didn't I tell you I'd be back?'
'And we both knew it wasn't possible.'
'But I'm here.'
'For how long? How many days till they catch you? And Seri's right. This time they won't send you politely away. This time it will be Narkad, and you'll be an old man before you see Earth again.'
He moved a little closer to her. 'Suppose they don't catch me?'
'All right, suppose they don't. Suppose you get what you want at the White Sun, then what? Will you buy a house in Ree Darva, and ask Sekma to be your first dinner guest? No, you'll be running, harder and faster than you ever ran before, to get clear of the Hyades. And wherever you spend your half million credits, it won't be here.'
'So?' asked Kettrick, and reached out to touch the warm golden curve of her neck just where it met the shoulder.
She struck his hand away.
'Why should I break my heart again for a day or two? It's too hard, Johnny! I won't do it.'
For a moment the old remembered Larith looked at him hot-eyed and angry-mouthed, and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that there might be a way. And then the mask had slipped back into place again and she was saying with every aspect of earnestness: 'If you love me, if you care for me at all, go away. Don't try this. It'll only mean trouble, great trouble, for all of us. I've been talking to Seri. We can put you on a ship tonight and you'll be safely out of the Cluster by morning.'
And now he understood. She might not 'belong' to Seri, which was the Darvan way of saying 'married,' but they had a comfortable thing going and they did not want it broken up.
He did not trust himself to speak, though he saw that she was waiting anxiously for his answer. He turned away, holding hard to his anger, trying to be fair about it. She was within her right, and he had no just cause to feel the way he did. It was only that he had always thought of Larith as being his. Even when his reason told him that she was not existing in a vacuum, inert, outside of life, waiting for his return, some deep part of him had clung to the idea that she was doing just that, if not physically then at least in her emotions. As he had done. He felt sold and foolish, and his rage was not lessened because he knew it was unjust.
'Please, Johnny?' she said. 'Will you do it?'
Ridiculously, he thought how glad he was that he had not climbed the stairs.
He shook his head. 'No. But you needn't worry, Larith. Whatever arrangement you have with Seri is your own business. And his. I'll not question it.'
'It isn't that easy,' said Larith softly, and he thought there was a throaty hint of tears in her voice. 'I won't see you again, Johnny. Goodbye.'
The door clicked gently and she was gone. Kettrick finished dressing. As he went up the inner stair to the roof he heard the sound of a car leaving the courtyard, the gate swinging shut behind it. Seri was alone in the garden.
'You should take her advice, Johnny. It's good.'
Kettrick said viciously, 'Let's get down to business.'
'No reason to be nasty. What did you expect us to do, urge you on to break your neck?' He handed Kettrick a goblet of the cool, potent drink he had always liked best in the summer nights, and sat down. 'Well, we tried. Now, what did you expect me to do to earn these half million credits?'
Kettrick did not answer at once He walked among the fragrant shrubs and the flowers that were washed of color by the moonlight but not of scent. He stood by the low wall and saw the lights of Larith's car diminish, turn, and disappear. He drank the cool drink and forced himself to forget everything hot and impractical, like the impulse he had to throw Seri off the wall, and to concentrate solely on the important matters.
He kept reminding himself that if he failed, if he were caught before he had fulfilled his mission, his license was again forfeit, and there might well be a term at Narkad before he was through with the Hyades forever. The passing thought that without Larith the Hyades meant nothing to him was only that, a passing thought. He could love as well as the next man, but he had loved the Cluster long before he ever heard of Larith.
He looked up at the sky, the familiar sky with the copper moons and the great orange stars of the Cluster like beacon lamps beyond them, and far away, tiny and brilliant, the glitter of the White Sun. He began to be excited and joyous and there was a certain defiant satisfaction in feeling that way. He was at no pains to hide it from Seri.
'I need a ship,' he said.
Seri grunted. 'Well, that doesn't surprise me. I have two in port. I've already posted the itinerary for one of them, but the other is unscheduled.'
Kettrick looked up at the sky again. Earth had developed long jump starships because her isolated position and the disappointing barrenness of her sister planets had driven her to it. Anywhere she wanted to go was a long way off. Here in the Hyades the Darvans had not needed long jump ships. They were not practical within the Cluster, on the same principle that the big globe-girdling ultrasonic jets were not practical for local flights. And since the Cluster had provided its populations with all the trade and excitement they needed, nobody had bothered to go outside of it. The space-minded Darvans were just beginning to think about enlarging their horizons when the first ships from Earth arrived and made the whole question irrelevant.
Feeling pretty chagrined at learning that they were not the sole lords of space as they had believed, still the Darvans were quick enough to adjust. They adopted the long-distance Rodman drive and the much larger, heavier ships for extra-Cluster use, and for some domestic purposes, especially periphery patrols. Within the Cluster, though, the same small short-jump Darvan ships still moved between the suns, and this was good for Kettrick's purpose.
He had the course all clear in his mind, exactly where he would make worldfall and exactly what he would do there. Some of the planning was based on talks with Sekma; there were certain planets where the mythical Doomstar seemed to be particularly strong in the minds of the natives. Some of it was based on Kettrick's own ideas. From Seri's roof he could see much of his itinerary spread across the heavens. The stars were old friends, and the many-colored worlds that circled them seemed suddenly very close. He shut his eyes, remembering.
'When can she go?' he asked.
'Three days.'
'Good. Which one is she?'
'Who's skipper now?'
'A new man, Johnny. You wouldn't know him. I suppose you have all the answers, but I'd like to hear them. I
